92
Kaldrosa Wyn was lying in the shadow of a huge krul corpse. This one was shaped like a bear with scabby pale skin devoid of fur. She was near the crest of a hill in the Dead Demesne, north of Black Barrow—or north of where Black Barrow had been. The dome had come down minutes earlier, scaring the hell out of her. From her position, she could see several hundred of the other soldiers. Most of them were sa’ceurai, the rest were Agon’s Dogs. She’d come because her husband Tomman had, and if he was going to take a mission this dangerous, she was going with him.
A low whistle trilled in the distance, and seconds later, was repeated by someone closer. It was time. Kaldrosa pulled the muddy bag at her feet up and opened it. She dressed slowly, carefully, trying to work blood into her stiff arms and legs. They’d been crawling and lying in muck for two days, and it was a wonder she could move at all. They’d blackened their armor and weapons so they wouldn’t reflect sunlight, but she was still as quiet as possible. They didn’t want to spoil their gambit this close to its fruition.
The Ymmuri bows were the biggest problem. To string them, the Ymmuri warmed them by a fire for at least half an hour. That wasn’t an option. Someone had foreseen it, though, and the archers gathered around an odd, kohled Modaini magus named Antoninus Wervel.
Otaru Tomaki, one of Lantano Garuwashi’s advisers, was in command. Kaldrosa didn’t know what he’d seen to make him decide they should attack now—or if he had seen anything. Tightening the last stubborn leather strap between Tomman’s shoulder blades with numb fingers, she poked her head over the bear, not shrinking from its touch. Her horror at the monsters had peaked the first night. She might have gone mad if Tomman hadn’t lain next to her, his fingers interlaced with hers. Now, the monsters were just meat, and oddly unstinking meat at that.
The Khalidoran command tents seemed almost abandoned. There were a score of rich pavilions in a rough circle, but only a half dozen guards patrolled the area, and they focused on a pavilion beside the largest one. Four female meisters stood around it. That confirmed it for Kaldrosa. It was the concubines’ pavilion.
The Dead Demesne ended a hundred paces from the pavilions. Tomman and the other archers were creeping as close as they could. She knew Tomman could make the shot from two hundred paces, but they didn’t want to take chances; everything depended on being quick and lethal.
Turning to sit against the bear, she stretched her arms and rolled her head. South of her hill, the black dust from the dome was settling in the city that had been hidden beneath Black Barrow. In the center was an expansive white castle. The city itself was at the highest point of the plain, so Kaldrosa could see nothing of the battle beyond it. She pulled on her helmet and turned in time to see every guard and meister in sight tumble to the ground with arrows stuck in them.
There was another whistle and a thousand men jumped to their feet and ran toward the pavilions. The sa’ceurai usually shouted war cries, but now they were silent. A few stumbled and fell with muscles cramping from their nights of exposure, but most reached the pavilions in seconds.
Otaru Tomaki held up a hand with four fingers extended, gave a tempo, and cut. A hundred sa’ceurai ringed the pavilion that had been guarded while the others fanned out. On the count Tomaki had given, they cut through the walls of the pavilion on four sides simultaneously and stormed in.
By the time Kaldrosa arrived, maybe five seconds later, the six eunuchs inside the tent were dead, and the lone woman was ringed by wary sa’ceurai. The woman was dark-haired, of a slender build, maybe sixteen. She was dressed richly and held a sword, waving it wildly. “Get away! Stay back!” she shouted.
It struck Kaldrosa that a hundred sa’ceurai were probably not the kind of rescuers a Cenarian princess would expect. “Your Highness,” Kaldrosa said, “be calm. We’re here to save you. We’ve come from your husband.”
“My husband? What madness is this? Stay back!”
“You’re Jenine Gyre, aren’t you?” Kaldrosa asked. The girl fit the description, but she’d never seen her.
“Time!” Otaru Tomaki said. “We’ve got to go!”
“Jenine Gyre?” the girl laughed, twisting the name. “That’s been one of my names.”
“King Logan sent us. He’s missed you terribly, Your Highness. You’re the reason we’re here,” Kaldrosa said.
“Logan? Logan’s dead.” Their puzzled looks must have convinced her it was no trap. She went white. “Logan’s alive? ‘The Cenarian king.’ Oh gods.” The sword tumbled from her fingers. She passed out.
Otaru Tomaki caught her before she hit the floor. He hoisted her over a shoulder. “Good work, easier this way.”
“I’ve never seen someone actually swoon,” Antoninus Wervel said. The kohl connecting his eyebrows had smudged and run from his days in the Dead Demesne, making him look more freakish than menacing. “Very well, are we ready?”
“Thirty seconds,” Tomaki barked.
The sa’ceurai, who’d held perfect order to that moment, bolted, looting every pavilion they could in a frenzy. Kaldrosa counted, and every last warrior was back by twenty-eight. At thirty, Antoninus Wervel extended his hands to the sky and a blue flame whooshed out, turning green at its apex.
Then they waited. A tense minute later, an answering green flare arced into the sky from the opposite side of Black Barrow.
“We go east, through the Dead Demesne,” Tomaki said. “Go!”
93
In the tumult of clashing arms, grunts, curses, clashing sword on sword or sword on shield, the thump of cudgels hitting flesh, the muted crack of breaking limbs or shattering skulls, the whistle of air escaping from a throat instead of a mouth, the familiar stench of blood and bile and death-loosened bowels and the sweat of exertion and the sweat of fear, Kylar was suddenly serene. He kicked low into a white krul’s shin, snapping it. He slid past the falling beast, lunged to slide Curoch into another krul’s throat, reversed his grip on the sword, and stabbed it through the white krul’s skull before it hit the earth.
Its death and the sudden slackness in the krul nearest him gave Kylar a moment to look at the Titan. It had reached the thick of the fight, a hundred paces away. It swept its spiked club in a savage swathe. Krul and men alike were lofted into the air, pierced by spikes longer than swords and then flung free on its next slash.
Kylar plunged back into the maelstrom like a diver into a cool lake on a blistering day. Vi’s command to kill gave the world a beautiful focus. There was no fear about protecting others less capable. No worry about advancing at a slow enough rate that the rest of a line of plodding sword-swingers could keep pace. No thought of concealing how good he was. Not even the muted horror of killing men. A dark facsimile of a Harani bull reared up before Kylar, lashing stump-like feet, slashing mighty tusks. Kylar dodged backward, hesitated until it was about to land on all fours, then dove beneath it. Curoch passed through the bull’s abdomen like a comb passing through a princess’s hair on the hundredth stroke. It was beautiful. The creature trumpeted in pain and its bowels squirted onto the ground. Kylar was already killing something else.
He’d acquired a stabbing spear somewhere, and now he spun into another knot of krul. None had time to swing weapon or claw at him. The spear spun and Curoch darted like a hummingbird, and eight beasts died. He wasn’t fighting, or killing, or butchering. It was a dance. He didn’t decapitate a krul unless he needed to change the direction of its falling body; it was faster to clip a single artery. Faster to cut a hamstring. Faster to cut across a face to take both eyes. He stopped killing the black krul half the time, focusing on the white, the bears, the aurochs, and the Harani bulls—anything that was in his path to the Titan.
He blinded a Harani bull in one eye, made it spin, slashing at him with its tusks, then speared its other eye. Blinded and mad with rage, it charged, plowing through line upon line of krul, trampling and killing. Kylar found himself laughing.
When the Titan was less than thirty paces away, for the first time, Kyl
ar had a cut parried. This krul was different from any he’d yet seen. Where most krul seemed to be crafted on the idea that stronger-is-better, bigger-is-best, this creature was man-shaped and as lean as Kylar. Instead of skin, it had a blood-red chitin exoskeleton. Its face was a featureless chitin oval. It held two swords of the same material and stood in a perfect ready stance. It countered Three Daisies with Garon’s Stand. Kiriae’s Crouch with Boulders Falling. But when it tried to stop the Knot Loosed with Sydie’s Wrath, Curoch punched through its chitinous chest. Kylar decapitated it to be sure and saw that the exoskeletoned red warriors were the only krul around the Titan. As the Titan swung its club, they easily rolled out of the path of every swipe. There were thirteen thirteens of them, swarming like fire ants.
Between the fire ants and the Titan, the Cenarian center was close to collapsing. The Lae’knaught, the Cenarians, the Ceuran reserves, and the Alitaeran reserves had all come here, but the center could not hold. The Titan was as tall as seven or eight men, and neither stupid nor slow. Where the cavalry bunched, it killed half a dozen horses and men in a single swipe. Where they spread out, the fire ants darted into the gaps and killed men at every turn.
The Titan lifted a foot to stomp on a horseman charging him, and the ants scattered. Kylar leapt through the gap. The Titan’s foot came down, crushing man and horse to jelly and shaking the ground. Kylar jumped and grabbed its calf. The Titan wore scale armor made of scales so big that Kylar didn’t dare imagine what they had come from, but the straps holding the armor together were thick leather and enormous hemp ropes. With Curoch sheathed, Kylar clambered up to the Titan’s belt.
The Titan noticed him and spun so fast Kylar’s feet lost their grip and swung out horizontal. Kylar saw chitin warriors crushed by the unexpected move. The Titan swatted at him and Kylar was batted into the folds of its furled wings.
Cocooned in soft, stinking leather, Kylar slipped toward the ground. He grabbed a wing bone as thick around as his thigh. He climbed as quickly as he could and Curoch came to hand as the Titan noticed that he was still hanging on. Kylar slashed once, twice, three times, and the soft, hand-thick membrane parted. He slapped Curoch onto his back and slipped through the hole as the Titan unfurled its enormous wings with a snap. Caught halfway through the wing, Kylar was almost knocked unconscious by the whiplash. The Titan furled its wings to try to shake him loose again and Kylar pushed through and jumped.
He caught himself on one of the huge spines protruding from the Titan’s back. The Titan spun again, but didn’t see him, and then was distracted by some attack Kylar couldn’t see. Kylar’s feet found purchase on a lower spine, and timing the movements of the Titan’s body, Kylar clambered from spine to spine.
There was nowhere to brace himself for a blow to cut into the Titan’s spine, so Kylar kept climbing until he reached the broad gorget that protected the Titan’s neck. A fringe of metallic hair protruded over it, and Kylar grabbed a handful, bracing himself to ram Curoch into the back of the Titan’s head.
Magic arced through the metallic hairs and blasted him off his feet. Kylar spun, hanging on by one hand.
He lost his grip and caught the gorget itself, his hand between the metal and the Titan’s skin. Kylar swung around and hacked blindly into the Titan’s neck. Magic burst from the Titan in a shockwave. The world went black and Kylar felt himself spinning into space. There was nothing to grab, no possible way to stop his fall—and from this height, falling would surely be lethal. It was like a dream: the rush of air, the sick emptiness in his stomach, the twist as he braced for the inevitable impact—but he didn’t wake up. He crushed something, and heard as much as felt his bones snapping. His collarbone, right arm, every rib on the right side and his pelvis crunched and crackled.
When he blinked his eyes clear, he was flat on his back, a fire ant crushed beneath him. Kylar tried to move, but there was no way. Pain arced through him, so intense that black spots swam in front of his eyes. If he tried again, he’d black out. He was dead. Just like that, Kylar’s battle was finished.
The Titan had staggered back several huge steps. Its neck was fountaining blood from the right side. Kylar had caught its carotid artery. It screamed. Then it caught sight of Kylar. If Kylar could read emotion in those silver and black cat’s eyes, he would have thought he read satisfaction. The Titan stepped forward. It was dying, and it knew it, and it was going to fall on top of Kylar to crush him.
Kylar extended one finger to the Titan and lay back and looked at the sky. A speck floated in front of his eyes and he blinked, but it didn’t go away. In the sky, diving from mountainous heights was a bird of prey, diving at great speed. Even in a dive, it was clear it must have had a thirty foot wingspan, and it was diving straight at Kylar.
Great, crushed by a Titan or by some huge bird. Beautiful.
There was no question of moving. So many bones were broken that breathing was excruciating. Kylar looked back at the Titan. The blood-fountain from its neck still gushed. It was rocking forward, its perfect white teeth bared at Kylar.
The bird snapped its wings open at the last second and swooped into the Titan’s face with bone-shattering force. The Titan’s head whipped back with a crack and it dropped like a stone—backward, onto the lines of krul.
Kylar lay back. He’d hoped to do more. He might have even been tempted to think his destiny would have been to do more, but he knew better. Anyway, at least he’d killed the Titan. That was surely worth something.
There was a ululating cry from the Ceuran lines, and the allies surged forward. Kylar saw men and horses leaping over him.
He’d barely closed his eyes when he felt magic sliding into him. With a sure and brutal hand, his bones were wrenched into place and reconstructed in rapid order. When the magic receded, Kylar lurched over and threw up. He hadn’t even known he could be Healed so quickly. Who else would have tried?
“One of these times, you’re really going to have to save my life. This is really getting old. By the way, I thought I told you to hold onto this.”
Kylar gaped up at Durzo. His master was extending Curoch to him. Durzo was wearing a huge pack on his back that extended several feet above his shoulders—except it wasn’t a pack. “Oh, hell no,” Kylar said. “You cannot fly. Tell me you can’t fly.”
Durzo shrugged. “Hollow bones, changes to the heart and eyes if you want to see while you dive, careful re-apportionment of body mass—it’s a real bitch. Helps if you study dragons.”
“Dragons? No, don’t tell me.” Kylar stood, shaky from the vast amount of magic that had coursed through him. “I didn’t think I could heal that fast—” he cut off as Durzo’s wings melted into his back and his form subtly changed proportions. Durzo had taught him that shifting his features, even the relatively minor shifts from one human face to another, took eight to twelve hours. Now his master had lost thirty-foot wings in a matter of seconds. “Unbelievable,” Kylar said.
“It’s too hard for you,” Durzo said, a note of apology sneaking into his voice.
“Do you know where Elene is?” Kylar demanded.
“Not for sure, but I know where the party is.” Durzo looked like he was about to say more, but he stopped. His face drained of humor.
A moment later, Kylar caught what dismayed his master. By degrees, the ground beneath them seemed to sigh. The stench of the newly dead was magnified tenfold. Jorsin’s spell locking the ground had been broken. The Dead Demesne shook off its chains and breathed.
94
Godking Wanhope saw the Cenarian flare arc high over his command tents and his heart stopped.
Jenine. They were taking Jenine.
He stood on the last flight of steps before a great dome of the ancient castle. It was the tallest building he’d ever seen, with towering arches and flying buttresses that scraped the very heavens. Inside, he could feel Khali—and Neph Dada. Dorian was surrounded by a dozen highlanders and two hundred Vürdmeisters: more than enough. The real battle would be between himself and Neph,
his old tutor. Neph, who was making his play at usurpation. Neph, who had raised a Titan and the red buulgari—the fire ants, the bugs—which had been imprisoned near the Titan.
Nor was Neph Dada the only one making a play. Wanhope’s brother Moburu had spent almost all his strength in cutting through Wanhope’s forces yesterday to get to Black Barrow. Now he was emerging from one of the tunnels under the city. He had a ferali.
From the stairs, the Godking had a vantage of everything north and east of the castle. To the north, he could see the small Cenarian force cutting through the Dead Demesne to the east, where they would meet Logan Gyre’s troops, led by the king himself. Moburu’s force looked to be only a few hundred, and it would meet Logan’s troops before the Cenarians who’d taken Jenine got there. Without the ferali, the Cenarians would obliterate Moburu’s force. With it—well, it depended on how good Logan’s magae were.
All in all, the resulting clash should give him plenty of time to go inside, take Khali and cut off Neph from the vir. Without vir, Neph and Moburu would be helpless, and the entire army of krul would finally be united. Wanhope had made mistakes, but the day was far from lost. He was turning to go inside when he saw Moburu’s men turn and head for the Cenarians holding Jenine.
His heart pounded. He’d seen this scene as his gift came back. Moburu’s ferali would demolish the kidnappers, and he would seize Jenine. Wanhope saw the picture vividly. Moburu held Jenine, his eyes wild, a spell wrapped around her head that would crush it like a melon if he released it.
It was too late for Jenine. Wanhope could see her head popping, brains squirting out of the narrow holes in the spell. He blinked. Even if he saved her, his marriage was finished. The Cenarians had taken her. She must know now that Logan was alive. If he rescued her within sight of Logan, would she thank him for it? Inside, at least, was power. With Khali, Wanhope had magic, wealth, every pleasure of the flesh, comfort. There was the study of things lost, of magics no one could teach but a goddess. There was everything but friendship, companionship, love—but what were those things if he was going to go mad and couldn’t enjoy them anyway? This was his birthright, and people had been trying to take his birthright for as long as he’d lived. He’d given everything to be here. What would happen to his harem if he left? He’d given those girls a decent life, a better life than they could have imagined. He couldn’t live without the vir. He’d quit it once, and quitting had nearly killed him. He couldn’t do it again. Jenine was dead to him anyway. Besides, he wanted to crush Neph, to teach him finally who was the master and who the student, to avenge all the cruelties Neph had inflicted on him growing up.